


Breaking Binary

by Frog_that_writes



Series: Queer Andi Mack [2]
Category: Andi Mack (TV)
Genre: Nonbinary Andi Mack, Nonbinary Character, Trans Character, god i love the good hair crew so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 06:07:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15503976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frog_that_writes/pseuds/Frog_that_writes
Summary: Andi discovers something new and can't wait to tell their friends about it.





	Breaking Binary

**Author's Note:**

> A few parts of this might make more sense if you read "Starbucks, Walks, and Coming Out" first, but it's not really a necessity. Hope you enjoy!

Andi wasn’t sure if she had always felt this way. This odd sense of being out of place with herself, cringing when people referred to her and not liking what she saw in the mirror. It was her whole appearance, from the way her face was soft and her body slim to the way her hair was long.

Eventually she proved to Cece that, yes, she did actually want to cut her hair “boy short” and, no, she wasn’t going to regret it, and that brought with it an unmistakable sense of relief. Watching in the mirror as each long strand was cut was like watching someone snip away at all the problems in her life. Looking in the mirror no longer felt as bad when her hair was short and didn’t bring an unmistakable look of femininity with it. Besides, now she didn’t accidentally get hot glue and paint in her hair. This was much easier to handle.

Hair hadn’t really the end of her problems, though.  She didn’t know how long it had been happening but there was just an odd feeling of discomfort every time people referred to her. At first she thought it had been when people talking about her like she wasn’t there. Adults thinking they knew better and that she didn’t understand her own situation.  _ “What a scandal, turns out her sister is her mom!” “Poor girl, doesn’t even know who her real dad is!” _ All the things people said in hushed tones when she entered a room like she wasn’t there. 

Then, she noticed that it wasn’t really just a matter of people talking about her. Anytime someone referred to her in the third person there was a disconnect, a sort of nausea that rose in her stomach and the feeling like she wanted to cry, which made no sense. Why should something so simple upset her so much? She didn’t know how to put it into words to get people to stop doing whatever it was that had her feeling like this, so she just tried not to let anyone know show she felt. She didn’t need anymore accusations of teen angst.

She started to notice the feeling more and more often after a while. It went beyond just a simple feeling of not liking her body and into a growing sense of dread for every time she would have to shower or change her clothes. She wished she hadn’t decided to put a mirror in her room because it meant she had to see her reflection more often. 

Puberty felt wrong in a way that seemed worse than the way other people would talk about it. They talked about it with a sense of being upset that it was unpleasant, but with excitement over the results. Embarrassing voice cracks meant voices were deepening. Cramps meant you were becoming a woman. It sucked, but it was worth it. Andi couldn’t agree.

She didn’t want to be a “young woman.” She didn’t see why Buffy did either. She didn’t see why Cyrus was so excited for the Bar Mitzvah that meant he was becoming a man. 

It felt like the whole process of puberty was marking a distinction between male and female that no one had cared about when they were kids, and Andi was apparently the only one not excited about this change.

It felt far too binary. Far too like everyone was fine with falling into two neat little lines, one filled with pink and marked with a skirt and one filled with blue and marked with pants.

It wasn’t just that she didn’t like the stereotypes, though that was also a big part of it. She knew boys could be feminine, she had Cyrus to prove that. He shrieked at the sight of bugs and spent more time on his hair every morning than her and Buffy combined. (Though she later realized, at Cyrus Bar Mitzvah, through a confession, that in breaking the stereotypical view of men he fell into a different kind of stereotype. He still broke that stereotype in other ways, and in the end it didn’t really matter.) And Buffy may be a girl, but she could give every guy on the track team a literal run for his money, and she looked beautiful while doing it. She knew she didn’t have to fall into the stereotypical view of femininity, but being a girl still didn’t seem very fun to her. 

After Cyrus’ coming out she had looked more into the lgbt community, just scrolling through tumblr mainly, and had run across the term “transgender.” Originally, she had just been confused. How could someone not be the gender they were born as? But reading into it more she realized it really made a lot of sense. A scary amount of sense, actually.

She thought that was what she was, for a while, but while being a guy sounded better than being a girl, it still didn’t feel right. Like when you had a shoe that was two sizes too small, that you switched out for a shoe that was only one size too small. It fit better, but it wasn’t a long term solution. .

When she later found out her boyfriend, Walker, was trans, she had been tempted to jump him with questions, about if that was how it felt for him or if being trans felt completely different from what she was experiencing and she was just looking much too far into it, but figured that may come across as insensitive. Instead, she decided to do a bit more of detailed research session.

It was one of the rare nights that they were over at Cece and Ham’s that they decided to do some of said research. Pulling out the laptop they were extremely grateful to have brought since her phone screen was rather hard to read off of for long, she brought up tumblr and got to work.

It was like a scavenger hunt of terms, mainly just hopping from one tag to another and finding more discourse than information when she saw a new word: Nonbinary. It was easy enough to discern the meaning, not binary. Considering it came from a post about gender, she assumed it was referring to the gender binary.

Exploring that tag some more she grew more and confident that this is what she was. She was nonbinary. And after more searching, she realized she could use  _ they  _ pronouns and nearly cried out of relief. It felt so much better, to be able to think of people introducing them as they instead of she, child instead of daughter, teenager instead of young woman, that they actually did start to cry the more they thought about it. There wasn’t much of a doubt for them that this is who they are.

There also wasn’t much doubt for them that they weren’t going to be able to sleep tonight, and that sitting here just stewing in the feeling of excitement wasn’t an option. Quickly putting on their shoes and grabbing their phone they tried to head out the door as quietly as they could to sneak into Andi Shack. Shuffling around with only the fairy lights they had on the wall to help them see, they eventually found what the were looking for, an empty notebook. They had a coming out to plan.

A coming out, they realized, was far easier than it looked, and they gained a new respect for Cyrus’ semi casual “I like him too.” They knew Walker would be okay with them being nonbinary, but there was also a chance he wouldn’t want to date them anymore. Bex would probably be okay with it, considering she was fine with pretty much everything, but Ham and Cece were worrying them the most. Ham would probably accept them, even if he was a little on the fence at first, but Cece tended to form an opinion and then refuse to give up on it. She would probably be worried that Andi was being too rash about this, considering it took her 2 years to be talked into allowing Andi a haircut. What they said to her had to be perfect, they had to explain how long they had felt this was for as long as they could remember and that this wasn’t some phase, something they would wake up tomorrow and regret. 

They had written and erased and crossed out and rewritten what was essentially an essay so many time that their hand was definitely starting to cramp and the really regretted taking a notebook and not their laptop for so long, they hardly noticed the time passing until they glanced out the window to discover the sky had lightened considerably. They had come out to the shack probably sometime around 3, and glancing at the clock showed that nearly 2 hours had passed. And Cece and Ham, the crazy people they were, tended to be getting out of bed around this time. And they were going to freak out when she realized that Andi wasn’t in bed. 

They snuck back into the house successfully before deciding to get at least a little bit of sleep. It had been an exciting night.

 

* * *

 

It was nearly two weeks later when Andi finally decided they had a fairly good idea how to come out. It was probably overkill, sure to focus so much on exactly what they were going to say when they were probably going to go off script the second they started talking, but they felt better having a plan. Mack’s may be known for being impulsive, but this was something they couldn’t afford to be rash with. It was important to them that they did this right.

One of the hardest things to decide had been who to come out to first. Walker had seemed like a good idea, since he was trans too, but they were still scared he wouldn’t want to date them anymore. Bex would probably be okay with it, but she was also the most high risk to come out to. She was their mom, the person they lived with, and getting kicked out of their home wasn’t really on their to-do list. Ham and Cece were definitely the people they wanted to come out to last, since they wanted to have a bit of practice before facing the metaphorical beast. That left them with Buffy and Cyrus.

It would probably be easiest with them. Cyrus was already part of the lgbt community and from what they had been told Buffy accepted that readily without even a thought. Even if they didn’t initially get it, the three of them had been through so much since they became friends when they were 7. It was unthinkable, in their opinion, to just drop each other over something so stupid. It would take a lot more than a gender identity to break them up.

They were still scared of course, and ended up texting their group chat asking for them to meet at The Spoon the day before just so they wouldn’t have a chance to chicken out. They were glad they did the next morning when they woke up to realize they definitely would not have had the courage to send that text.

The morning drug by and they were beginning to regret having said to meet in the afternoon. They somehow managed to wake up at 7 sharp, even though it was Saturday and they didn’t have an alarm set, which meant they had some time to kill. Sitting in the house with Bex all day when they couldn’t even explain why they were so antsy didn’t sound like much fun, so they killed most of the time by walking around town. They eventually had to stop obsessively checking the time just so their phone battery wouldn’t die, though. That’s when they figured it was now or never and made their way to The Spoon.

Which was a mistake because they ended up sitting there for half an hour, waiting for their friends and ignoring the dirty looks the waitresses were giving them because they were too nauseous to get baby taters so they just kept asking for more refills of water. Eventually Buffy finally got there though, with her backpack in tow.

“Hey, Andi! So what did you want to talk about?” She asked sliding into the booth.

“I’ve got something to tell you guys but I kinda want to wait until Cyrus is here. It’ll be easier if I only have to say it once.”

“Okay,” Buffy replied dragging out the word in confusion. “Well he should be here soon. I’ll just work on my homework until then, I guess.” The two sat in silence for a few minutes before Cyrus eventually joined them.

“Hey guys, sorry I’m late, I thought I was going to have a ride but I ended up having to walk here. Hope you didn’t start without me?”

“Nope,” Buffy said. “Andi wanted to wait for you to get here so she could tell us her big announcement.” It felt weird for Andi to know why they cringed at the pronouns now, but they were happy that they were about to make it so they wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore.

“Okay, good. So, are we going to get any baby taters?” He asked

“Uh,” Andi’s stomach lurched at just the thought. “I don’t think I want any baby taters.”

“Okay,” Buffy said raising her eyebrows. “Is it just me, or is anyone else getting serious deja vu right now?”

“Tell me about it.” Cyrus said with a smile.

“Wait what? What are you guys talking about?” Andi asked bemused.

“We’ll tell you afterwards, just get on with your announcement.” Cyrus demanded.

“Okay, well. There isn’t really a super easy way to say this, but do you guys know what transgender means?”

“Like, people whose bodies don’t match their gender?” Buffy asked. “Yeah, why.”

“Well there’s this one, like, I guess you could call it a subgroup of transgender people called nonbinary. People who aren’t male or female.” The dawning realization accompanied by a lack of any negative response on Buffy and Cyrus’ faces was such a welcoming sight, so Andi continued to blow through the butchered plan they had. “And, um, they normally don’t use ‘she’ or ‘he’ pronouns and use they and them instead. And I guess what I’m trying to say is that that’s… me.”

“Oh Andi.” Buffy said, and well that alone wasn’t normally a very telling response the fact that she reached out to squeeze their hand said more than enough.

“We'll always be here for you Andi, no matter what.” Cyrus reassured them, reaching out to take their other hand. “Wait, are you still going to use the name Andi?” He asked as an afterthought.

“You know I haven’t really thought about it. I think I will, since when you say it out loud you can’t tell if it’s ‘Andi with a y’ or ‘Andi with an i.’” They’d be lying if they said they didn’t tear up a little at the fact that Cyrus immediately asked them a question just so he could make sure they were comfortable.

“I love you guys.” They added with a smile.

“We love you too Andi. Now are you feeling up to baby taters yet? Because I’m pretty hungry.” Buffy said, already motioning a waitress over to their table.

“As long as you’re paying.”

* * *

 

“Hey, I almost forgot, what did you guys mean when you said deja vu earlier?” Andi asked, after the trio had been eating baby taters and chatting for a few minutes. 

“Oh yeah!” Cyrus said, having forgotten as well. “It’s just, when you said you didn’t want baby taters, it was almost the exact same thing I said to Buffy when I came out.”

“Come to think of it,” Buffy said laughing. “I’m pretty sure this was the same booth we had been sitting at too.”

“Wow, I had no idea, that’s crazy!” Andi said shaking their head. “I guess history does repeat itself. Come on Buffy, it’s your turn next.”

“Even if I did have something to come out as, I think I’d let you just have your moment. Though I guess if I call a meeting here and request this booth in the near future I’ll have figured something out.”

“I guess that will have to do for now.” Cyrus said with a grin that Andi couldn’t help but return. Andi would probably be eternally thankful for how easy this coming had had been. They could worry about explaining that they weren’t out to anyone else yet and all the specifics later. For now they were just going to bask in the friendship of the most amazing people they knew.

Sure, they weren’t perfect, and Andi was sure they’d probably mess up on their pronouns for a while, but they were going to put in a real effort and that was all they asked for. They really did have the best friends in the world.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: The reason I stressed about Andi going outside and then sneaking in was because I originally had a scene where Andi comes out to Ham and Cece in the morning. It felt too rushed, and I wanted this story to be able to fit into our college au "I Will Survive (College)" so I scrapped the idea to have Andi come out to Buffy and Cyrus instead.  
> I'm not 100% sure if I like this, but I really wanted to get something for nonbinary Andi out before I get hella busy this month.  
> Please remember to comment your thoughts, and leave a kudo if you enjoyed!


End file.
